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RFC Italy: Brainstorming

After having visited Italy more than once and coming to appreciate its incredible history, I’ve had an idea for an RFC modmod centered on medieval Italy. That’s right, an entire map on just one small section of Europe—not just the peninsula and nearby islands, I’d likely include Austria proper, southeastern France, the Adriatic coast, and possibly the Balears as well. I feel that this would allow a level of depth and accuracy uncommon in wider-ranging RFC mods.

Given that I would really want the focus to be on the medieval era and on a diverse start I’d have the start date be roughly 1000 AD, which gives a diverse start both nation-wise and religiously. The Emirate of Sicily and Byzantine Empire still possess territory in the south but would very quickly come under attack from the Normans, there are a whole bunch of merchant republics (vying for coastal cities and influence abroad), and an interesting mix of Lombard petty states. Later spawns would be complex, often coming at the collapse of larger states, and could happen more than once—local autonomy is the default in this time period. In the late game Austria and France would become existential threats fighting over northern Italy—I’d suggest an end date around 1600.

One big way gameplay would change in this mod would be the raising of armies—if at all possible, I’d prefer it to involve a simulation of raising armies as levies as opposed to keeping a professional force, which I’d do by making armies cheap to build in hammers but vastly expensive to maintain for long. Mercenaries would only be available to the wealthiest nations.

I know that the development of this modmod is certainly never going to happen, not least because I know nothing about coding, but I wanted to put my thought out there at least.

I would love for this to be an RFC Mod, or even a Sengoku styled mod! I've given it some thought, but I do not have the modding capabilities to create it. The past few years I have thought about it as a Sengoku style mod, but only from central Italy to the Alps. All in all I think it would be a great mod, no matter the exact boundaries.

Map size and timeline would be the first things on my mind. Starting in 1000, ending in 1500 seems like a good idea. One year per turn ranging from emerging communes of central and northern Italy (receding Byzantines and fractious states in the south) to centralized regional powers on the eve of the Italian Wars.

Another thing to look at, with so many city-states and all, would be where to cap the amount of players. The absolute limit is 65 I think. Including southern Italy also runs the possible risk of domination victories, not to mention a very powerful civ early on.

Guelph/Ghibelline conflict will be fun to implement. I imagine the numerous powerful families being useful for random events. There could be diplomatic options akin to the Sengoku mod where smaller states can "freely" move in and out of larger states' orbits as vassals. Revolts, alliances, and the like too.

Some time ago I was thinking of making a RFC Europe modmod, with a larger Northern Italy in order to let the Langobards try an Italian Kingdom, and later on the Duchy of Milan struggling with Florence, Venice and Genua eventually leading to French and Spanish invasion.

Now, some thoughts about your idea:

ENGINE
Not to get mad with programming, you can choose to use SoI or RCF Europe engine. As far as I remember, both already have explanations about adding/changing civilizations. The main issue would be changing the map.

MAP
Ought to include HRE, France, Spain and part of the Ottoman Empire, larger and mightier than Italian signorias.

TIME SPAN
I'd suggest a 568 AD nearby start (Langobards invading Italy) and a 1861 end (birth of the modern Kingdom of Italy), just like RFCE timeline.

Wow, thanks everybody for the great ideas! I’m honestly kind of torn between the “greater” and “lesser” ideas, as in whether to go for a very detailed Italy or a map that encompasses foreign powers. My initial thought process was to represent major foreign nations with one city at the edge of the map to be their “capital” and have armies spawn to invade from time to time. For instance, the map might have Graz on the edge of the map, where the Austrian civ has its capital in-game, and then armies spawn there to invade eastern Italy.